This new painting started with a basic layin I took to a the Old Bakery & Emporium, a historical non-profit gallery gift shop here in Austin, to work on recently. Here’s my tweet from that day –

Setting up at Old Baker & Emporium this afternoon 2 do a little painting 🙂 This is a historical bldg in Austin across from the Texas State Capital. Gonna work on this little 8×8 w/water soluble oils I prepped w/my basic design. 1st time ever painting in public – wish me luck! 🙂 pic.twitter.com/XwiOOOn8VN

I worked in a full basic layover that afternoon that felt pretty darn close to what I wanted – colorful, fun, optimistic 🙂 This is what it looked like end of the afternoon on my mini easel I’d taken to the gallery –

From this point, it was so close to what I wanted I let it hang on my wall near my easel at home where I could see it different ways – in passing, pausing going by, standing in front of it, catching sight of it by surprise – giving me feedback on how it made me feel in moments I wasn’t expecting.

I liked it. A lot!

But I felt it still lacked just a little of something I was looking for, and I wasn’t sure what it was yet.

I liked the way the dark space bottom left between the leaf and the flower matched the upper right corner. The dark contrast worked well, but it also left me feeling isolated somehow. So I worked the flower with tiny gradations of yellows and even pale pinks.

Gradually I began to see I needed to choose. Did I want the flower to be almost as if in space? Bright and shiny against the background with some surrounding foliage and color? Or did I want the flower to be more immersed in its surroundings? Part of the garden?

I decided on the latter and began adding touches into some of the negative spaces.

I remember standing in front of my painting as it rested on the wall about eye level with me, and made the conscious decision to make the upper right darkish area, with its wonderful streaks of thin lines and textures, more aligned with the bottom left, with the lush growth of green leaf – keeping the upper right’s original flow of texture – and added the swatches of green and turquoise!

I liked both versions, but I wanted the feel I got with the finished version – more engaged, more optimistic, more of the sense of the flower as part of a plush garden environment 🙂

I hope you enjoyed the development of my work, and will agree that – sometimes – it really just has to be a choice what we want our art work to become, even if much of the development is intuitive and includes letting portions of the painting just “be”!

[…] forms (like florals) with paint and – sometimes, marble dust, both acrylic and with water soluble oils, but the newness (to me) and unknowns of how molded/formed absorbent grounds would hold up, has me […]

[…] Among fiddling with about 5 6×6 projects, I also cut down foam board to mount 4 new 12×16 prints I hope to take to the Old Bakery & Emporium tomorrow (Wed). My aim is to set up and paint for the 1st time since early last year! […]

[…] girl’s birthday, with the grandson too of course 😊 and had a really nice evening. She spotted Dancing Flower for the 1st time & really liked it, so I gave it to her for her birthday; she immediately said […]

[…] My small 8×8 painting Dancing Flower is no longer available on eBay or direct from me and is now in a Private Collection.Please feel free to order prints, and gift items with this lively image via Fine Art America – coffee mugs, framed/acrylic/and metal prints + much more 😊 Gifts & Prints, Available now, @ Fine Art AmericaI learned quite a bit from doing this small piece, and hope you’ll enjoy reading into some of my creative process about it – thank everyone! ❤️ Dancing Flower – My Newest Palette Knife Painting ; Sometimes It’s Just About Making a Choic…Adan […]

[…] ‘cause it definitely still looked much more colorful in my new (current) art room.Like I did with Dancing Flower, back before we moved and the surgeries surfaced, I’ll reshoot the image and re-present it on […]

Thanks so much, Shawn – I think I’ve enjoyed playing with texture almost as much as color itself, lol! A lot of times, it’s in the how of the applying touches of color that happens to create the texture 🙂